Still abusing fuzzy time. Still the night of the opening feast. Tarquin stepped out of the fireplace into his own living room to find, as he had suspected he would, Danny on the sofa, the radio on in the background and a book open but being ignored. His husband stood up, wrapping his arms around Tarquin’s neck and kissing him.
“How was your day?” Danny asked.
“Really, really weird,” Tarquin replied, taking a seat on the sofa. “Though, and I never thought I’d find myself saying this, thank Merlin I’m gay, otherwise it would have been all kinds of even more awkward.”
“Go on?”
“Okay, so first off Selina calls us all to an Emergency Staff Meeting. Which is never how good terms begin. Turns out one of the students is a half veela. The mother isn’t in her life, so she didn’t know until now. The father never told her. So, no measures in place. Half veela teenage girl running around the school with no idea of how to use her powers - no idea she even has powers. We all had to have an interview about… well, whether there was any chance she’d used them on us by mistake. And… that sort of thing.”
“Even you?”
“Yes, even me.”
“But Selina knows you’re married to me.”
“Procedure,” Tarquin shrugged. “All staff, male and female. I mean, some people are attracted to more than one gender.”
“Yes, but you’re not one of them. If girls did it for you, you’d still be living in Narnia.”
“Harsh.”
“Doesn’t sound like best start to the year,” Danny mused sympathetically. “Get better from there?”
“Better, yes,” Tarquin nodded, in a tone that implied more was to come, “Shared a bottle of wine at the feast with the Potions professor, who turns out to be a bit of a lightweight, so I floo’d her home. And… well, you know how it is when you side-along floo someone. It’s rather,” he gesticulated.
“You had to put your arms round a woman?” said Danny in a tone of mock scandal. “Is she young and pretty?”
“Don’t. She’s Henny’s age. So, yes, I took her home and then her husband was there, and I don’t know whether he saw me with my arms around his wife or not, but I made it very clear that I had to return home to my own husband. Turns out she’s English though, she offered me tea.”
“You taste like red wine, not tea.”
“I didn’t accept. I knew you’d be sitting waiting.”
“Thanks,” Danny smiled, trying to not mentally split hairs… I knew you’d be waiting. On the one hand, that could be I wanted to come back to you - I came back because I knew you’d be here. On the other, it could be I came back because I knew you wanted me to, because I didn’t want to be in trouble, and that wasn’t quite the same thing… “Does that mean you missed me today?” he tried instead.
“I couldn’t miss you. Your damn song was stuck in my head all day. You haunt my every waking moment.”
“Charlie called while you were out. We should call him back.” He tried not to feel hurt. He knew he was being ridiculous, that Tarq was only teasing him, and that that was a fairly staple way of them expressing their affection for each other. But it sometimes needled him that Tarq couldn’t just be sweet. It slipped his mind that he had made fun of his husband mere seconds before. It… it just would have been nice to be missed.